domenii

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while being worn on the wrist could bridge the communications gap between the deaf and those who don't know sign language,

says a Texas A&m University biomedical engineering researcher who is developing the technology. The wearable technology combines motion sensors and the measurement of electrical activity generated by muscles to interpret hand gestures,

says Roozbeh Jafari, associate professor in the university's Department of Biomedical engineering and researcher at the Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems.

Although the device is still in its prototype stage it can already recognize 40 American sign language words with nearly 96 percent accuracy,

notes Jafari who presented his research at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 12th Annual Body Sensor Networks Conference this past June.

The technology was among the top award winners in the Texas instruments Innovation Challenge this past summer.

The technology, developed in collaboration with Texas instruments, represents a growing interest in the development of high-tech sign language recognition systems (SLRS) but unlike other recent initiatives,

and the videos or images captured may be considered invasive to the user's privacy. What's more,

because these systems require a user to gesture in front of a camera, they have limited wearability--and wearability,

Jafari's system makes use of two distinct sensors. The first is an inertial sensor that responds to motion.

Consisting of an accelerometer and gyroscope, the sensor measures the accelerations and angular velocities of the hand and arm, Jafari notes.

This sensor plays a major role in discriminating different signs by capturing the user's hand orientations and hand and arm movements during a gesture.

However, a motion sensor alone wasn't enough, Jafari explains. Certain signs in American sign language are similar in terms of the gestures required to convey the word.

With these gestures the overall movement of the hand may be the same for two different signs

but the movement of individual fingers may be different. For example, the respective gestures for"please "and"sorry"and for"name

Jafari's system makes use of another type of sensor that measures muscle activity. Known as an electromyographic sensor (semg), this sensor non-invasively measures the electrical potential of muscle activities,

Jafari explains. It is used to distinguish various hand and finger movements based on different muscle activities.

working in tandem with the motion sensor to provide a more accurate interpretation of the gesture being signed,

In Jafari's system both inertial sensors and electromyographic sensors are placed on the right wrist of the user where they detect gestures

and send information via Bluetooth to an external laptop that performs complex algorithms to interpret the sign

and display the correct English word for the gesture. As Jafari continues to develop the technology,

he says his team will look to incorporate all of these functions into one wearable device by combining the hardware and reducing the overall size of the required electronics.

He envisions the device collecting the data produced from a gesture interpreting it and then sending the corresponding English word to another person's smart device

so that he or she can understand what is being signed simply by reading the screen of their own device.

"The combination of muscle activation detection with motion sensors is a new and exciting way of understanding human intent with other applications in addition to enhanced SLR systems,

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Researchers discover a gene variant that provides a delaying mechanism for Alzheimer's disease Medical research has yet to discover an Alzheimer's treatment that effectively slows the disease's progression,

That mechanism is a gene variant--an allele--found in a part of the genome that controls inflammation.

The findings appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. Lead author Matthew Lalli who earned his Ph d. working in UCSB's Kosik Research Group,

sequenced the genomes of more than 100 members of a Colombian family affected with early-onset Alzheimer's.

These individuals have a rare gene mutation that leads to full-blown disease around age 49. However, in a few outliers, the disease manifests up to a decade later."

"We wanted to study those who got the disease later to see if they had a protective modifier gene,

"said co-author Kenneth S. Kosik, co-director of UCSB's Neuroscience Research Institute and a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental biology."

"We know they have the mutation. Why are they getting it so much later when the mutation so powerfully determines the early age at onset in most of the family members?

We hypothesized the existence of gene variant actually pushes the disease onset as much as 10 years later."

"Lalli used a statistical genetics approach to determine whether these outliers possess any protective gene variants,

and he found a cluster of them.""We know that age is the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's beyond genetics,

"said Lalli, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St louis."The variant that we found is related age,

so it might explain the actual mechanism of how an increase in age increases the risk of Alzheimer's--through a rise in eotaxin."

"To replicate the findings, the UCSB researchers collaborated with UC San francisco to study 150 individuals affected with Alzheimer's or dementia.

UCSF investigators measured levels of eotaxin in the participants'blood and collected DNA samples to confirm who carried the gene variant identified in the Colombian population.

"Although the gene mutation in the Colombian population is extremely rare, this variant is added not, "he."

whether blood transfusion from young individuals to older ones confers benefits.""The results of this work may provide additional evidence that eotaxin plays a role in the deleterious effects of aging,

"said Lalli.""We have an important preliminary finding, "said Kosik.""If this is a true mechanism of Alzheimer's progression,

then we can modify the level of eotaxin in individuals to treat the disease. But our results must be replicated

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#How anesthesia may fight lung infections: Mouse study The Johns Hopkins and University of Buffalo research team built its experiments on previous research showing that children with upper viral respiratory tract infections who were exposed to the anesthetic halothane during minor surgical procedures had significantly less respiratory symptoms

and a shorter duration of symptoms compared with children who did not receive halothane during surgeries.

Arraythe team discovered that giving the animals volatile anesthetics, such as halothane, led to decreased bacterial burden and lung injury following infection.

The researchers report that the anesthetics augmented the antibacterial immune response after influenza viral infection by blocking chemical signaling that involves type I interferon

a group of proteins that help regulate the activity of the immune system. Using a combination of genetic, molecular,

as if the animals were infected never with a prior influenza virus. Array"Our study is giving us more information about how volatile anesthetics work with respect to the immune system,

suggest that volatile anesthetics may someday be helpful for combatting seasonal and pandemic influenza, particularly when there are flu vaccine shortages or limitations."

"A therapy based on these inhaled drugs may help deal with new viral and bacterial strains that are resistant to conventional vaccines

and treatments and could be a game changer in terms of our preparedness for future pandemics and seasonal flu outbreaks because it's focusing on host immunity,

"says Chakravarthy.""We hope our study opens the door to the development of new drugs

and therapies that could change the infectious disease landscape.""The investigators say they are currently testing an oral small molecule immune modulator in phase 2 clinical trials that acts like volatile anesthetics to help reduce secondary infections after someone becomes sick with the flu u

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#Mathematical'Gingko trees'reveal mutations in single cells that characterize diseases A new interactive analysis program called Gingko has been released that reduces the uncertainty of single-cell analysis

and provides a simple way to visualize patterns in copy number mutations across populations of cells.

Detailed knowledge of CNVS can point to specific treatment regimens. The problem is that current techniques for acquiring this knowledge are difficult

and produce unreliable results. Today, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) publish a new interactive analysis program called Gingko that reduces the uncertainty of single-cell analysis

and provides a simple way to visualize patterns in copy number mutations across populations of cells.

Mutations come in many forms. For example in the most common type of mutation, variations may exist among individual people--or cells--at a single position in a DNA sequence.

Another common mutation is a copy number variation (CNV), in which large chunks of DNA are deleted

either from or added to the genome. When there are too many or too few copies of a given gene or genes, due to CNVS,

disease can occur. Such mutations have been linked not only with cancer but a host of other illnesses, including autism and schizophrenia.

Researchers can learn a lot by analyzing CNVS in bulk samples--from a tumor biopsy for example--but they can learn more by investigating CNVS in individual cells."

"You may think that every cell in a tumor would be the same, but that's actually not the case,"says CSHL Associate professor Michael Schatz."

"We're realizing that there can be a lot of changes inside even a single tumor, "says Schatz."

"If you're going to treat cancer, you need to diagnose exactly what subclass of cancer you have."

"Simultaneously employing different drugs to target different cancer subclasses could prevent remission, scientists have proposed. One powerful single-cell analytic technique for exploring CNV is whole genome sequencing.

The challenge is that, before sequencing can be done, the cell's DNA has to be amplified many times over.

This process is rife with errors, with some arbitrary chunks of DNA being amplified more than others. In addition, because many labs use their own software to examine CNVS,

there is little consistency in how researchers analyze their results. To address these two challenges, Schatz and his colleagues created Gingko.

The interactive web-based program automatically processes sequence data, maps the sequences to a reference genome,

and creates CNV profiles for every cell that can then be viewed with a user friendly graphical interface.

In addition, Gingko constructs phylogenetic trees based on the profiles, allowing cells with similar copy number mutations to be grouped together.

Importantly, Gingko, which Schatz and his colleagues validated by reproducing the findings of five major single-cell studies,

also analyzes patterns in the sequence reads in order to recognize, and greatly reduce, amplification errors. Schatz and his team named their software after the gingko tree

which has documented many well therapeutic benefits.""We like to think our Gingko'trees'will provide benefits as well,

"says Schatz, referring to the graphical way that CNV changes are represented by analysts. Right now, CNV is not a commonly used diagnostic measurement in the clinic."

"We're looking into the best way of collecting samples, analyzing them, and informing clinicians about the results,

"says Schatz. He adds that CSHL has collaborations with many hospitals, notably Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the North Shore-LIJ Health System,

to bring single-cell analysis to the clinic. For Schatz, Gingko represents a culmination of CSHL's efforts over the past decade--spearheaded by CSHL Professor Michael Wigler--to pioneer techniques for studying single cells."

"Cold Spring Harbor has established itself as the world leader in single-cell analysis, "says Schatz."

"We've invented many of the technologies and techniques important to the field and now we've taken all this knowledge

and bundled it up so that researchers around the world can take advantage of our expertise

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#A humanoid robot to liaise between space station crews A team of French researchers from the Institut cellule souche et cerveau (Inserm/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1),

led by CNRS senior researcher Peter Ford Dominey, has developed"an autobiographical memory"1 for the robot Nao,

and show that such humanoid robots represent a potential solution for the accumulation and transfer of knowledge.

It was designed to assist the work of astronauts in complicated situations, especially during extra-vehicular outings g

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origami could put a folded twist on structural engineering. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Georgia Institute of technology and the University of Tokyo have developed a new"zippered tube"configuration that makes paper structures that are stiff enough to hold weight yet can fold flat for easy shipping

and storage. Their method could be applied to other thin materials, such as plastic or metal, to transform structures from furniture to buildings to microscopic robots.

Illinois graduate researcher Evgueni Filipov Georgia Tech professor Glaucio Paulino and University of Tokyo professor Tomohiro Tachi published their work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Origami structures would be useful in many engineering and everyday applications, such as a robotic arm that could reach out

Paulino sees particular potential for quick-assembling emergency shelters, bridges and other infrastructure in the wake of a natural disaster."

and deploy it on site.""The researchers use a particular origami technique called Miura-ori folding.

The structure folds up flat, yet rapidly and easily expands to the rigid tube configuration."

"said Paulino, a former Illinois professor of civil and environmental engineering.""We are putting two tubes together in a strange way.

"The zipper configuration works even with tubes that have different angles of folding. By combining tubes with different geometries, the researchers can make many different three-dimensional structures,

such as a bridge, a canopy or a tower.""The ability to change functionality in real time is a real advantage in origami,

Larger-scale applications could combine metal or plastic panels with hinges. Next, the researchers plan to explore new combinations of tubes with different folding angles to build new structures.

and explore applications from large-scale construction to microscopic structures for biomedical devices or robotics.""All of these ideas apply from the nanoscale

and microscale up to large scales and even structures that NASA would deploy into space, "Paulino said."

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#Ideal single-photon source developed With the help of a semiconductor quantum dot, physicists have developed a new type of light source that emits single photons.

They have reported their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications together with colleagues from the University of Bochum.

Single photons are important in the field of quantum information technology where, for example, they are used in quantum computers.

However, quantum dots made of semiconductor materials are offering new hope. A quantum dot is a collection of a few hundred thousand atoms that can form itself into a semiconductor under certain conditions.

Single electrons can be captured in these quantum dots and locked into a very small area. An individual photon is emitted

when an engineered quantum state collapses. Noise in the semiconductor A team of scientists led by Dr. Andreas Kuhlmann and Prof.

Richard J. Warburton from the University of Basel have shown already in past publications that the indistinguishability of the photons is reduced by the fluctuating nuclear spin of the quantum dot atoms.

For the first time ever, the scientists have managed to control the nuclear spin to such an extent that even photons sent out at very large intervals are the same color.

Quantum cryptography and quantum communication are two potential areas of application for single-photon sources.

These technologies could make it possible to perform calculations that are far beyond the capabilities of today's computers.

of which the University of Basel is the co-leading house e

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#Study creates cell immunity to parasite that infects 50 million There are two common approaches to protecting humans from infectious disease:

Targeting pathogens and parasites with medicines like antibiotics, or dealing with the conditions that allow transmission.

A paper published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports demonstrates the effectiveness of a third strategy:

Adjusting the landscape of the human body to remove the mechanism that allows pathogens to cause disease.

"says Dan Theodorescu, MD, Phd, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center.""Bill Petri and I had been social friends for years--Christmas parties, that kind of thing.

When I was at Virginia it happened that we were on a recruitment committee together

MD, Phd, chief of the Division of Infectious diseases & International Health at the University of Virginia led to the idea of applying an innovative cancer science technique to the study of infectious disease.

if the loss of any single gene would confer immunity to the parasite E. histolytica,

which infects 50 million people and causes 40,000-110,000 deaths via severe diarrhea worldwide.""Chelsea is a fearless experimenter.

She took a library of cells that Dan had developed in his work with bladder cancer

"We do this all the time in cancer research, "Theodorescu says.""Commonly, we're looking for genes that,

"In this case the analogue of chemotherapy was the infectious, dangerous pathogen.""This amoeba is a cluster bomb--a voracious killer.

In the back of my mind I was thinking the parasite was going to decimate the host cells no matter

what we did with their genetics, "Marie says. For the vast majority of cells in this genome-wide screen, Chelsea Marie was correct;

E. histolytica decimated many thousands of these independent cell cultures. However, a small number of cells seemed to resist the parasite.

or had silenced genes somehow offered immunity to these cells? To find out, Marie discarded the killed cells

"Right now there is a single antibiotic that works against this parasite. We know that eventually the parasite will develop resistance to the antibiotic

and at that point there's no plan B. This could be the plan B--targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease."

what she calls"mini guts"to test therapeutics that may be useful in human patients. And technological advances make this study's general technique more efficient,

what are called CRISPR libraries instead of RNAI screens.""This is a major finding with translational implications for this infection that causes so many deaths worldwide,

but also proof that this cancer-science approach can be used to explore genetic mechanisms of resistance in the field of infectious disease,

"Theodorescu says. The field of infectious disease has been focused on the infection, targeting pathogens and their transmission.

This study shows that in addition to characteristics of the parasite, mortality due to disease can be prevented by manipulating characteristics of the host t

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#Super-stretchable metallic conductors for flexible electronics Washington state University researchers have discovered how to stretch metal films used in flexible electronics to twice their size without breaking.

The discovery could lead to dramatic improvements and addresses one of the biggest challenges in flexible electronics, an industry still in its infancy with applications such as bendable batteries, robotic skins, wearable monitoring devices and sensors,

and connected fabrics. The work was led by Rahul Panat and Indranath Dutta, researchers in Voiland College's School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering,

and graduate student Yeasir Arafat. They have filed for a patent and published their findings in Applied Physics Letters.

Stretching a struggle Researchers have struggled for years with designing and manufacturing the tiny metal connections that go into flexible electronics.

The metal has to undergo severe stretching and bending while continuing to conduct electricity. Manufacturers have used so far tiny metal springs that can stretch

and still maintain connectivity, but the springs take up space and make it difficult to design complicated, high-density circuitry.

Furthermore, electricity has to travel farther in coiled springs, requiring more power and bigger batteries."

"The circuitry ends up requiring a ton of real estate and bulky batteries,"said Panat. Researchers have experimented with gold,

which works better than other materials but is prohibitively expensive, and copper, which severely cracks when it is stretches more than 30 percent or so.

A quantum improvement The WSU researchers found that when they made a metal film out of indium,

a fairly inexpensive metal compared to gold, and periodically bonded it to a plastic layer commonly used in electronics,

they were able to stretch the metal film to twice its original length. When the pieces broke

it was actually the plastic layer that failed, not the metal.""This is a quantum improvement in stretchable electronics

and wearable devices,"said Panat. While Panat is excited about the work and hopes it will be commercialized, the researchers also want to better understand the metal's behavior."

"A metal film doubling its size and not failing is very unusual, ''he said.""We have proposed a model for the stretchy metal

but much work is needed to validate it. It's a good situation to be in

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#First superconducting graphene created by researchers Graphene, the ultra-thin, ultra-strong material made from a single layer of carbon atoms,

just got a little more extreme. University of British columbia (UBC) physicists have been able to create the first ever superconducting graphene sample by coating it with lithium atoms.

Although superconductivity has already been observed in intercalated bulk graphite--three-dimensional crystals layered with alkali metal atoms,

based on the graphite used in pencils--inducing superconductivity in single-layer graphene has eluded until now scientists.""Decorating monolayer graphene with a layer of lithium atoms enhances the graphene's electron-phonon coupling to the point where superconductivity can be induced,

"says Andrea Damascelli, director of UBC's Quantum Matter Institute and lead scientist of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study outlining the discovery.

Graphene, roughly 200 times stronger than steel by weight, is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.

Along with studying its extreme physical properties, scientists eventually hope to make very fast transistors, semiconductors, sensors and transparent electrodes using graphene."

"This is an amazing material, '"says Bart Ludbrook, first author on the PNAS paper and a former Phd researcher in Damascelli's group at UBC."

"Decorating monolayer graphene with a layer of lithium atoms enhances the graphene's electron-phonon coupling to the point where superconductivity can be stabilized."

"Given the massive scientific and technological interest, the ability to induce superconductivity in single-layer graphene promises to have significant cross-disciplinary impacts.

According to financial reports, the global market for graphene reached $9 million in 2014 with most sales in the semiconductor, electronics, battery, energy,

and composites industries. The researchers, which include colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research through the joint Max-Planck-UBC Centre for Quantum Materials,

prepared the Li-decorated graphene in ultra-high vacuum conditions and at ultra-low temperatures (5 K or-449 F or-267 C),

to achieve this breakthrough h

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